By Josh Richman
Oakland Tribune
Posted: 10/17/2009 02:30:48 PM PDT
Updated: 10/17/2009 02:30:55 PM PDT

Oakland International Airport may be the nation’s only airport with a specific policy letting users of medical marijuana travel with the drug.

The policy is spelled out in a three-page document quietly enacted last year by the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office. It states that if deputies determine someone is a qualified patient or primary caregiver as defined by California law and has eight ounces or less of the drug, he or she can keep it and board the plane.

Deputies warn the pot-carrying passengers that they may be committing a felony upon arrival when they set foot in a jurisdiction where medical marijuana is not recognized. But they say they don’t call ahead to alert authorities on the other end.

“We never have. We’re certainly within our right to, but we never have,” said Sgt. J.D. Nelson, a spokesman for the sheriff’s office. “Our notification of the passengers is for their own safety and well-being.”

California voters approved medical marijuana use in 1996, while federal law still bans all possession and use.

But Oakland attorney Robert Raich notes the Code of Federal Regulations says a prohibition on operating a civil aircraft with knowledge that there is marijuana aboard doesn’t apply to carrying marijuana that’s “authorized by or under any Federal or State statute.”

The federal Transportation Security Administration does the screening and when marijuana — or any suspected contraband — is found, the
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sheriff’s deputies are summoned.

Low profile

Oakland’s airport policy was enacted in February 2008, but Raich said he didn’t want to publicize it until recently lest the Bush administration change federal regulations, or lest it become an issue in Obama administration drug officials’ confirmation hearings.

“All other airports in medical cannabis states should have similar policies but they don’t,” he said, adding that he hears San Francisco International and Los Angeles International airports are relatively kind to medical marijuana users while airports in Burbank, Ontario and San Diego are not….

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/06/AR2009100603847.html

…….ARCATA, Calif. — Stiff competition from thousands of mom-and-pop marijuana farmers in the United States threatens the bottom line for powerful Mexican drug organizations in a way that decades of arrests and seizures have not, according to law enforcement officials and pot growers in the United States and Mexico. ……….

Almost all of the marijuana consumed in the multibillion-dollar U.S. market once came from Mexico or Colombia. Now as much as half is produced domestically, often by small-scale operators who painstakingly tend greenhouses and indoor gardens to produce the more potent, and expensive, product that consumers now demand, according to authorities and marijuana dealers on both sides of the border.

The shifting economics of the marijuana trade have broad implications for Mexico’s war against the drug cartels, suggesting that market forces, as much as law enforcement, can extract a heavy price from criminal organizations that have used the spectacular profits generated by pot sales to fuel the violence and corruption that plague the Mexican state.

While the trafficking of cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine is the main focus of U.S. law enforcement, it is marijuana that has long provided most of the revenue for Mexican drug cartels. More than 60 percent of the cartels’ revenue — $8.6 billion out of $13.8 billion in 2006 — came from U.S. marijuana sales, according to the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy.

Now, to stay competitive, Mexican traffickers are changing their business model to improve their product and streamline delivery. Well-organized Mexican cartels have also moved to increasingly cultivate marijuana on public lands in the United States, according to the National Drug Intelligence Center and local authorities. This strategy gives the Mexicans direct access to U.S. markets, avoids the risk of seizure at the border and reduces transportation costs.

Unlike cocaine, which the traffickers must buy and transport from South America, driving up costs, marijuana has been especially lucrative for the cartels because they control the business all the way from clandestine fields in the Mexican mountains to the wholesale dealers in U.S. cities such as Washington.
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“It’s pure profit,” said Jorge Chabat, an expert on the drug trade at the Center for Research and Teaching in Economics in Mexico City.

The exact dimensions of the U.S. marijuana market are unknown. The 2007 National Survey on Drug Use and Health estimated that 14.4 million Americans age 12 and over had used marijuana in the past month. More than 10 percent of the U.S. population reported smoking pot once in the past year.

Mexico produced 35 million pounds of marijuana last year, according to government estimates. On a hidden hilltop field in Mexico’s Sinaloa state, reachable by donkey, a pound of pot might earn a farmer $25. The wholesale price for the same pound in Phoenix is $550, and so the Mexican cartels could be selling $20 billion worth of marijuana in the U.S. market each year.

“Marijuana created the drug trafficking organizations you see today. The founding families of the cartels got their start with pot. And marijuana remains a highly profitable business they will fight to protect,” said Luis Astorga, a leading authority on the drug cartels at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, who grew up in Sinaloa in 1960s and recalls seeing major growers at social functions in the state capital, Culiacan.

Ingredients:
1 oz shake – select either sativa or indica
8 oz vegetable glycerin

Steps

1. Grind shake in coffee grinder
2. Mix ground shake into the glycerin. If overly thick, add water as necessary. They will easily mix.
3. Place into oven at 200 degress for 45 min DON’T GO ANY HIGHER TEMP THAN THIS
4. Take out of oven and let sit and cool for one hour
5. Place into crock pot and set on “keep warm”. MAKE SURE YOUR CROCK HAS A KEEP WARM SETTING.
6. “Keep warm” for 12 hours
7. Remove and strain thru cheese cloth as many times as needed (usually around 3 strainings)
8. DON’T BURN YOUR MOUTH. MAKE SURE IT IS COOL BEFORE BOTTLING into spray or dropper bottles
9. Generally 1/2 dropper bottle or 3 spritzes are adequate.
10. If too strong, dilute with water.

I just got off the phone with a patient of mine. She is a 65 year old professional therapist who very rarely, if ever had used cannabis in the past. She came in as an obviously legitimate patient with severe degenerative pain.

During our visit, I “warned” her about edibles, because many of us know someone who has taken a little too much of an edible and had a paranoid reaction. Unfortunately, she did not heed my advice and took too much of an edible. As a result of over medicating, the paramedics were called due to her age and she was brought to a local ER. Over a few hours she felt much better and was discharged.

So far, the story is a common one. The very sad end of the story is that on her discharge papers from the ER, she was diagnosed as a drug addict and cannabis abuser!

I would have suggested something along the lines of “drug reaction” instead. I am certain the ER has never seen any other drug reactions…LOL

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is characterized by enhanced -amyloid peptide deposition along with glial activation in senile plaques,
selective neuronal loss, and cognitive deficits. Cannabinoids are neuroprotective agents against excitotoxicity in vitro and acute brain
damage in vivo. This background prompted us to study the localization, expression, and function of cannabinoid receptors in AD and the
possible protective role of cannabinoids after A treatment, both in vivo and in vitro. Here, we show that senile plaques in AD patients
express cannabinoid receptors CB1 and CB2 , together with markers of microglial activation, and that CB1-positive neurons, present in
high numbers in control cases, are greatly reduced in areas of microglial activation. In pharmacological experiments, we found that
G-protein coupling and CB1 receptor protein expression are markedly decreased in AD brains. Additionally, in AD brains, protein
nitration is increased, and, more specifically, CB1 and CB2 proteins show enhanced nitration. Intracerebroventricular administration of
the synthetic cannabinoid WIN55,212-2 to rats prevent A-induced microglial activation, cognitive impairment, and loss of neuronal
markers. Cannabinoids (HU-210, WIN55,212-2, and JWH-133) block A-induced activation of cultured microglial cells, as judged by
mitochondrial activity, cell morphology, and tumor necrosis factor-release; these effects are independent of the antioxidant action of
cannabinoid compounds and are also exerted by a CB2-selective agonist. Moreover, cannabinoids abrogate microglia-mediated neuro-
toxicity afterA addition to rat cortical cocultures. Our results indicate that cannabinoid receptors are important in the pathology of AD
and that cannabinoids succeed in preventing the neurodegenerative process occurring in the disease.

Key words: Alzheimer’s disease; -amyloid; cannabinoids; microglia; neurotoxicity; neuroprotection

I wish to go on record as stating that I am strongly in favor of taxation and regulation of cannabis. IF this means, that medical cannabis is no longer a specialty for me to practice; so be it. I am in favor of liberal legalization and regulation.

I hear everyone speak about taxation of cannabis as the reason to do this. I would remind folks, that most dispensaries are already paying sales tax and the most seem ok with paying additional city tax. I think the real benefits for the California economy lay in two other areas:

1. Like it or not, if we de-criminalize cannabis in California, tourism will dwarf Amsterdam and LA and California will flourish.

2. I would imagine Pharmaceuticals would be very interested in setting up some labs in California to see what products make sense in the “Rx” world. Why can’t the state “own” a piece of the action.

Just consider the Gold Coast of California hosting cannabis to the world of tourism, capitalism and Pharma???

Every day in my office I see and speak with patients who have tried the sativa tinctures I have spoken about in prior blogs.

With some of the new and improved tinctures, patients are reporting that their daytime anxiety/depression is well managed with just a few “sprays” of tincture under their tongue. They never get buzzed, high or stoned. It is NOT that they could not use a few more sprays and get very stoned, it is just that they are using the tincture as their medicine.

These same patients tell me that in general, if they are smoking it is to kick back and relax – ?? recreational?? At the same time, they view the tincture administration as their medicine.

So, is it possible that perhaps cannabis for recreation might be smoked or vaped or eaten; but for controlled medicinal use “tincting” is the way to go.

We can get into an endless debate whether relaxing and “chilling” with smoked cannabis is a crime, recreational use or actually treating anxiety and depression – the hallmarks of our society??